


liability

by gengarchan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Insecure JJ, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Soft Otabek, its a few years ahead i suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 23:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11428359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gengarchan/pseuds/gengarchan
Summary: Jean wonders if he's a little much for Otabek, if he'll make him wild. Make him leave. Otabek has his answer.





	liability

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted soft JJbek so I took matters into my own hands. This is so heavily influenced by Liability by Lorde and also diverse characterizations of JJ and Otabek. I wanted to try my hand at it and it ended up being ridiculously tender. 
> 
> I love them.

Too much.

 

“You’re quiet today,” Otabek points out as they climb the stairs to their apartment. It’s short, but stable, like everything he says. Even— no matter exhaustion or emotion. Jean likes it sometimes. Hates it most of them time, because it makes Otabek impossible to read. He’s not like everybody else, who wears their annoyance in their eyes and lips and in their acid remarks about his ‘shit personality’. There is no stinging with Otabek, only a balanced stain of gruff and polite. Strikingly bitter, but sweet in the aftertaste. 

 

It still leaves his mouth dry, though. Even after all this time. 

 

“And you’re the last one who gets to tell me that, cub.” So he tries to shake it off, playfully tips Otabek’s chin with his index finger and winks before unlocking the front door. It was still a little surreal, the fact that Otabek had agreed to move in with him after only a few months of dating. Not that they didn’t know each other inside out, head to toe. It wasn’t an issue of unfamiliarity. Commitment, especially after an abrupt breakup with Isabella, didn’t roll off the tongue as smoothly as it used to. Otabek didn’t seem to mind, though. Was quick to nod when Jean offered him a key and more than a bottom drawer for his things. 

 

Their space was cozy. Hints of Otabek’s affinity for monotone and simplistic with tinges of Jean’s firecracker personality. It was them, and it was perfect and the warmth of it settles Jean in a way he can’t describe. Subdues a weakness that threatens to boil over. 

 

“ -nsion,” he hears Otabek say and he hadn’t even noticed that he’s holding his hand now, the shorter pulling him into their kitchen. Jean blinks, looks down at the beauty that is Otabek Altin— all tight jawed and deep eyed— and smiles. “Sorry, what was that? You’re so distracting you know~” 

 

Otabek flushes, but not as much as he would have if he was convinced. If he wasn’t worried. “I said that you have a lot of tension. Are you going to talk to me about it or not?” Or not, Jean thinks immediately. But Otabek is staring at him with more sincerity anyone ever allows him, and he’s wearing Jean’s old Tears for Fears sweater and he always tells the truth. Otabek Altin bled honesty, so how could Jean lie? 

 

“I just— ah.” It was difficult, forcing out something that conveyed him as anything less than confident or unbothered. Even though Otabek had promised, had soothed that he loved every corner and star of him, Jean couldn’t promise the same. He hated this part of him, this part that weighs him down to icy shores. He wanted to do away with it. Wanted cut it out of him. 

 

“Jean,” his lover cups his cheek with a gentle hand, presses the most tender kiss to his lips. “Please talk to me.” Otabek was, frustratingly enough, an avid reader of all things people, especially Jean. He knew all his quirks, his absence of enthusiasm and ramblings, the presence of something cold. It was something Jean admired— to be be marble silk. Hard but so feeling. 

 

“Some skaters, you know, they’re just saying I’m a little too much, but what do they know? Of course I’m too much for them!” _Too much, how does Otabek deal with you?_ Scratches at his throat, but he doesn’t let it materialize. Instead he leans down to steal another kiss. And another. Peppers his lover’s right cheek and the skin right below his ear with sweet touches of lips in hopes of letting the subject drop, letting it flutter away with the beats of his heart Otabek is hammering out of him. Jean circles his arms around the other’s waist, pulling him close. “Why don’t we go to bed for a bit? Work up an appetite before dinner?” 

 

Breath ghosting over Otabek’s ear, he can feel the heat rise in the other’s neck, can imagine the blush splattered under his sweater. The intimacy was always nice, slow, soft. A ballad compared to the staccato Jean was used to. This time, though, Otabek shakes his head, trademark frown set in place and strong brows furrowed. “Something’s bothering you.” 

 

Jean knows Yuri probably didn’t mean anything by it, and neither did the others. Confusion rippled through the skating world when their relationship was made public. Teasing could be expected. They were fire and ice. Sugar and Salt. Opposites attract, but they also tear each other apart. Too much of one and the other will suffocate, will get lost in it. He rests his forehead on Otabek’s broad shoulder. 

 

Too much— too much for Otabek. One day the cup would overflow, one day ice will melt to water and flow back to the sea. Does it hurt, he wonders, for water to come from ice? He wonders if Otabek would endure that hurt, if he’d even be able to tell that he was coming undone. He wonders if Otabek would leave before then, or if his rivers would extinguish his own flame— leaving nothing but the vapors of this wonderful thing. 

 

His hold on Otabek tightens, but he doesn’t move his face from his neck. 

 

“Am I too much for you?” The words leave his mouth before he knows it and he’s embarrassed, he’s scared that if he asks there will be an answer that is too honest. 

 

“Jean…” 

 

“Because I know you’re an introvert, and I know you don’t like talking too much and that I can’t go very long without leaving the house and I’m loud. I know that. I know you hate the color red and I just…. I just want to be good. I want people to be good so I tell them I’m good and I’m sorry if I’m burning you out. I’m so sorry. Tell me if I’m hurting you. You need to tell me because I wouldn’t be able to see it. I know how I am, cub, I—“ 

 

“I love you, Jean-Jacques Leroy.” Otabek promises, so stable and so earnest and Jean sighs shakily as Otabek wraps strong arms around his neck to hug him properly. “And you’re not too much. You’re just right. You don’t need to tell me that you’re great. I already know.” As if he doesn’t know anything else except for the fact that Jean is great, that Jean is _loved_. He lifts his head from the crook of his lover’s neck and stares. He stares, and wonders where Otabek’s eyes begin and where his world ends. They don’t bleed into each other as much as they intertwine, he realizes. That they’re the same thing.

 

“I love you too, Otabek. And that’s why you need to promise me that— that you’ll tell me if I’m being too much. If I’m tiring you out. I don’t want to hurt you.” He wants to keep them and their love. Wants to keep their roomy apartment and shared wardrobe and matching mugs. He wants to keep Otabek, the truest, sturdiest, and the most delicate man he’s ever had the pleasure of discovering. 

 

“That’s not an issue, Jean. You’re the sun. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” And goddamn if Otabek wasn’t the moon— controlling tides and warming the night. “And I’d never let you beat me.” 

 

Jean blinks. “Oh cub, you always let me win though~” and he playfully nibbles at Otabek’s ear and maybe he even catches the other smile— something pure and light and surely it’s at the center of the universe. 

 

Too much— and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> *crying*


End file.
